What’s New in HRSA’s FY2026 SAC Grants: Key Changes & How to Prepare
HRSA released this year’s FY2026 Service Area Competition (SAC) grants and all the necessary details for grantees to get started. There are some significant changes this year.
4-year project period instead of 3-year.
The page limit is back up to 120 pages after a 1-year trial of 90 pages. This is combined with several changes that inform which attachments count against the page limit. Few grantees will have issues staying within these guidelines.
Why would HRSA increase the page limit? Based on anecdotal input from our clients, we suspect they plan to use AI to review applications and therefore don’t mind the extra words.
Many narrative questions are new or modified, though the majority of questions were either not changed or were only tweaked grammatically. A few highlights:
New specificity regarding using your own UDS data to describe changes to the service area.
More focus on health care needs and services specific to nutrition, chronic disease management, preventive health education, cancer screening, and mental health services (essentially the HHS Make America Healthy Again priorities).
Removal of references to culturally and linguistically appropriate care and de-emphasis of social risk factors and enabling services.
Addition of “all age groups” as a prompt to describe access to services.
A new question asking how the health center will help to empower patients to actively participate in their care.
Adds BMI and weight assessment as focus areas for quality improvement and removes HIV, SUD, and general maternal and child health.
Form 4 Community Characteristics has been removed. This form previously reported on the population of the service area by race, ethnicity, income, insurance, and various factors like homelessness, HIV, LGBT, and veteran status.
Like last year, grantees are asked to describe how they will continue to provide services enabled by supplemental awards (like BHSE and Expanded Hours). The grants.gov process and most forms and attachments do not appear to have changed significantly.
If your health center’s budget period ends between February and May of 2026, we suggest starting your SAC application now. It is especially important to make sure you have up to date access to SAM.gov, Grants.gov, and EHBs.
Each year, CLC supports numerous clients with their SACs – from needs assessment and narrative writing to budgeting and EHB submission. We would be happy to discuss how we can help lighten your workload. . With a streamlined process, standard templates, and experienced staff, we can deliver immediate value to your health center. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to schedule a discussion.
Happy SAC season and good luck with your application!
